Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost?”
“The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise.”
“Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps a…”
“I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
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“Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who gave me his petition earlier. He was unable to be here, but would have liked to have been. I thank all those who have signed from across the country. The petition states: The petition of residents of Beverley and Holderness, Declares that the petitioners believe the existing school funding model in England is arbitrary and unfair; further declares that the ten best funded areas of England have on average received grants of £6,300 per pupil this year, compared to an average of £4,200 per pupil in the ten most poorly funded areas of England; and further declares that the petitioners welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce fairer school funding.”
“I will read out the full text of the petition, but, as you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker, other Members need not do so. In addition to presenting a petition on behalf of 2,287 people in Beverley and Holderness, I am also presenting petitions from the constituencies of Aylesbury, Bethnal Green and Bow, Buckingham, Central Devon, Chelsea and Fulham, East Devon, Forest of Dean, Grantham and Stamford, Haltemprice and Howden, Kingston upon Hull North, Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Ipswich, Lewisham, Deptford, Loughborough, Meon Valley, New Forest West, Newton Abbot, Oxford East, Penrith and The Border, South Holland and The Deepings, North Swindon, South Swindon, Tatton, Thornbury and Yate, Wantage, West Suffolk, Wimbledon and York Central. In addition, I am presenting a petition on behalf of the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for a verbosity that one does not usually associate with you. I am also grateful to colleagues who have filled in the time after this unexpected collapse of business. I am grateful for the time we have been given to present petitions calling for fair school funding from more than 100 constituencies right across England and the House. The current funding system is arbitrary and unfair. It penalises urban and rural alike, affecting both Labour and Conservative constituencies. We welcome the announcement of the new national funding formula for schools that the Chancellor mentioned in the comprehensive spending review last week, and we will continue, across the House, to make the case for reform, as the Government consult on their proposals.”
“Daesh is obviously a material threat that needs to be challenged, and the Prime Minister has set that out well today, but will he tell us why he believes that the Russians and Iran would step back from backing Assad and attacking the Free Syrian Army when we attack the mortal enemy, Daesh?”
“Q13. Will the Prime Minister join me in commending the French Government for facing down terror and continuing with the climate summit in Paris next week? Will he acknowledge the important role of legislators such as those at the GLOBE summit on 4 and 5 December, and does he agree that his personal presence in Paris sends a message to the world about our continuing commitment to a lasting climate deal?”
“The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. She has listed a number of points and I share some of her concerns, but on dash for gas, yesterday’s announcement was about getting rid of coal-fired power stations and all their pollutants and replacing them with gas. No journey to 2050, however ambitious, will not involve interim measures, such as replacing coal with gas. If she wants to give a balanced speech that takes everyone with her, she should acknowledge that.”
“I agree with most of the speech by the right hon. Gentleman. Providing certainty, and ratcheting and tightening up a deal in Paris over time, send a signal to the investment market. That means that we will get investment in innovation, research and development and the supply chain, which is a prerequisite of driving down costs. Only by that level of commitment will we get the acceleration of a cost curve downwards, which is the way that we will deliver for the planet while also protecting the consumer. That is why we need certainty and those kinds of framework.”
“Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we have to ensure there is engagement and understanding on this issue in Parliaments across the world? That is why today’s debate, and others like it, are so important. I refer the House to my declaration of interests. I will be chairing a GLOBE International two-day conference at the Assemblée Nationale on 4 and 5 December. About 250 legislators from around the world will be talking about the role of national Parliaments in setting the law, scrutinising government and making sure that international promises are turned into domestic reality.”
“That statement, however, falls a long way short of the reality in England. The Association of School and College Leaders has calculated that this year the 10 best-funded areas will receive an average schools block grant of £6,300 per pupil, compared with an average of only £4,200 per pupil in the 10 most poorly funded areas. For a typical secondary school of 920 students, that equates to a budget of £5.8 million in the best-funded areas and £3.9 million in the least well-funded areas—a difference of £1.9 million in a relatively small secondary school.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered funding for schools. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, and, equally, to see so many colleagues from both sides of the House filling the Chamber on a Thursday afternoon. It shows the strength of feeling on fairer funding for schools and that many colleagues want to see a fair and just system. I want to place on the record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the time for the debate. The issue has support from more than 110 colleagues from both sides of the House; only a fortnight ago they signed a letter to the Prime Minister championing fairer funding for schools. The premise of fair school funding awarded in accordance with a rational formula assessed on the basis of pupil need is a simple one and, one might think, uncontroversial.”
“I am delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend met the Secretary of State. The delivery of fairer school funding was of course a manifesto undertaking by the Conservative party at the most recent general election and, I hope, played a part in securing the majority that our party enjoys in this Parliament.”
“That will have meaning in many rural constituencies. Separately, as my hon. Friend knows, the Rural Fair Share campaign on local government funding, which it is my pleasure to chair, shows up the great disparities. An interesting point about fair school funding is that the issue is not about rural and urban; it is an entirely arbitrary, random and grossly unfair settlement. If we look at the F40 group’s proposals, Barnsley would be the biggest gainer, Sunderland and Leeds would be gainers, and other areas might do less well.”
“As I said, the issue should be uncontroversial, but because the discrepancies are so great any change will mean that money is removed from some schools and some areas. The losers will, understandably, fight and try to find an argument with which to defend what is fundamentally indefensible, because there is no rationale for it. I will go into that later in my speech.”
“My hon. Friend is right. Of course it is difficult at a time of flat cash and increasing financial strain to carry out redistribution, but it is when cash is flat, and no additional above-inflation increase is coming, that the discrepancy between areas becomes more important. Although it is politically more challenging to redistribute when there is a tight cash settlement—that is why it is so important to show the weight of opinion in the House—morally and educationally it is more important to bring that about. That is why we have pushed so hard, and I am grateful that the Government have listened and are prepared to seize the nettle.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That, too, has been a feature of the system for a long time. It is, in a way, a separate issue. If a child from Hull, perhaps from a deprived area, moves to a school in my constituency, which neighbours Hull, rightly or wrongly the additional funding given for that child will not follow the pupil who crosses the border to a school perhaps only a quarter of a mile away—for example, in Bilton on the edge of Hull in my constituency. That, too, is an indefensible feature of the system.”
“I do agree. As a result, the children of a multi-millionaire in one constituency or area receive more funding for their education than do the children attracting a pupil premium and from one of the poorest families in a neighbouring area. That is indefensible. The discrepancies are so enormous as to require change, notwithstanding the political challenges and difficulties of doing so.”
“Our high needs funding is now the lowest in England, so the East Riding has had to move funding over to try to compensate for that. The situation was unfair already. Then we moved to the £390 million the Government came forward with last year to help lower-funded authorities, but that was distributed on the basis of the schools block, one of the three blocks that make up the dedicated schools grant, and as my local authority had its money in the schools block and not the high needs block, it ended up receiving a very much smaller share of the cake.”
“On top of that, the East Riding targeted as much funding as possible at its schools. Various blocks make up the dedicated schools grant, and historically the East Riding chose to stick most of the money for special educational needs in the schools block—it was entirely free to do so. It said to schools, “Use your budget to deliver that.” There was practically nothing in the high needs block, because that money had been put into the schools block. When the dedicated schools grant came in, which was based on what had been spent at that time and how it was accounted for, the East Riding received among the lowest levels of SEN funding in the whole country. That was not because there was a lack of challenge, but because of how the accounting had been done.”
“Contrary to any lazy misconceptions that areas such as the East Riding are rural idylls, there are areas of deep deprivation. Withernsea ranked in the top 10% of most deprived areas in England on both the income and employment indices of multiple deprivation in 2010. In a devastating speech in 2013, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned that “many of the disadvantaged children performing least well in school can be found in leafy suburbs, market towns or seaside resorts”. The East Riding also faces the additional costs associated with needing to run small, rural schools because of its geography. There is a limit to how far we can expect children to be bused, so it needs to run small schools, which are necessarily more expensive. It therefore has higher natural costs, and greater challenges in delivering high-quality education.”
“The East Riding struggles with many of the challenges identified by Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw in rural and coastal areas of England, where it can be hard to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, and partnerships between schools can founder because of the distance between them. We could take a coastal town and ask, “Why can’t we replicate the London challenge in East Yorkshire?” but anyone who drew a circle around Withernsea in my constituency to find all the schools that might be able to provide mutual support would find that half the circle was in the sea and the other half took in a swathe of rural East Yorkshire. That does not create easy conditions in which to build the collaborative regimes that have made such a difference in London and that is a further reason why such areas need to be fairly funded.”
“We might think that if the disparity does not reflect deprivation, perhaps it reflects underlying performance in the system such as the quality of education in the schools, with more money going to help those areas doing less well. However, that would be wrong. Some of the best performing areas, notably in London, continue to receive thousands of pounds more per child than areas that are really struggling with education outcomes. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea receives 39% more funding per pupil under the schools block grant than my own area, the East Riding of Yorkshire, which loses out badly under the current funding arrangements.”
“Colleagues have mentioned the cross-border issue. The same applies in the relationship between Nottingham and the county that surrounds it: a 13-year-old pupil in the city gets more for their education than a disadvantaged child from the county next door, even though that child receives a pupil premium. Indeed, it is worse than that: a child who is in care in a certain area of the country and receives the pupil premium plus, worth £1,900, to reflect their needs, will still receive less than the child of a wealthy lawyer in Islington. That cannot be right. It needs to be fixed in a timely way and that is what we are gathered here today to tell the Minister.”
“Therefore, a school that serves the most deprived, as opposed to one that serves a remarkably affluent population, can receive hundreds of pounds less per pupil simply because of where it is rather than the nature and character of the children concerned, let alone their needs. Given the flat cash settlement for schools since that time, those figures will not have altered significantly. I will give another example of the disparity that can exist between authorities. A secondary school pupil in York who receives the pupil premium, which is worth £935 this year, still has less spent on his or her education than an equivalent pupil in Birmingham who is not eligible for the pupil premium. Therefore, the child of the wealthy entrepreneur or lawyer in Birmingham receives more than the child from the poorest home in York.”
“My hon. Friend is right and I hope and expect that we will hear from the Minister on when the House will get the detail about what the Government propose to do. To bring to life the example I mentioned of a relatively small secondary school with 920 pupils, the £1.9 million difference between two such schools in different areas is enough to pay the total costs—salaries and pension contributions—of 40 full-time teachers. That huge funding gap cannot be justified. The gap is not explained by pupil deprivation. People might think that the system is designed to give more to areas of concentrated deprivation, whether urban or other. In 2011, Department for Education analysis showed that a school with 43% of pupils eligible for free school meals can receive £665 less funding per pupil than a school with less than 10% eligible pupils.”
“I am grateful to the Minister. I am also grateful for the £390 million, which was a significant amount to find to help the lowest-funded authorities. A method for distribution had to be found and, under his predecessor, a decision was taken on that, which led to certain discrepancies, though overall there was certainly an improvement.”
“He was a tireless champion of the issue in the previous Parliament, and I know he continues to be highly supportive in his new role as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State. It is a delight to see him here. Progress is being made, in the form of the extra £390 million that was allocated as a down payment towards fairer funding in 2014, as well as through the Government’s manifesto commitment to make that extra resource part of the baseline funding settlement. The Minister said that there have been two parts to this: last year’s £390 million and this year’s; I know it is going to be every year from now on.”
“Those problems are not unique to the East Riding of Yorkshire—colleagues from up and down the country will testify to that, as is evidenced by the fact that there are so many of them here today. That is why the F40 group of local authorities, for which I serve as a vice-chairman, has come together to make the case for fairer funding. I pay tribute to the F40 campaign. It is led by Leicestershire Councillor Ivan Ould, who along with other F40 representatives has campaigned with great determination for almost 20 years. It is to the credit of the Government and Ministers that they are now listening to the campaign and are going to act. I know colleagues will want me to say that we all owe a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).”
“Before the debate, I asked headteachers in Beverley and Holderness about the challenges they face. I will quote some of the problems that they highlighted. One said: “We reduced staffing by reducing the number of cover supervisors and downsizing a number of teaching subject areas.” Another said: “Fewer sporting competitions—we can’t afford to pay for transport to away fixtures”— imagine the cost of doing so in a sparsely populated rural area. Another said: “Provision is stretched and children receive less intervention time”. Another said: “Resources are not being replaced or updated as we would like. The school guided reading scheme has been on the subject leaders’ development plan for the last 2 years and it is something that we cannot afford.” That is the reality on the ground in schools in my constituency.”
“Our call today is not for perfection but for a significant move to close the gaps. It is worth saying to colleagues who represent London seats that some areas of London—a few, admittedly—would benefit from a new national funding formula. Under the recommendations submitted to Government by the F40 campaign, which is the group of lowest-funded local authorities, there would still be, on average, more than £1,000 more per pupil in London than in the rest of the country. Take a class of 30. Whether it is in London or Warrington, there will be a classroom, kids and a teacher, and there might be a support assistant. A school in London will have £30,000 more a year to run that. Costs are higher in London, but not that much higher. It has to be right to move to something that is fairer to everyone.”
“Someone has to come bottom, but let there be a rationale for that. If we cannot develop a rationale, we should put people on the same money. In the Parliament before last, the all-party group on rural services conducted an inquiry on health and education funding. Professor Mervyn Stone, emeritus professor of statistics at Oxford University—a marvellous man with a beard like a biblical prophet’s—said, “If you move to equal funding per pupil or per patient across the country, you’d have something fundamentally unfair, because of the variety of costs”—I hope I am not unfairly putting words into his mouth—but we would still have something far fairer than any of the structures that anyone has come up with so far, let alone implemented in Government. Equal funding would be fairer.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is why we need a whole new look at this and a national funding formula. As a result of issues relating to the blocks that colleagues may or may not have followed—it is complicated—after the £390 million, the East Riding became the lowest-funded local authority in the whole country. Members can imagine the gratitude my constituents felt: the then Chairman of the Education Committee and leading member of the campaign for fairer funding had somehow dragged the East Riding from being the third or fourth lowest-funded authority to the very lowest. I had to put my hand up and say, a little plaintively, “Well, we did get £1.8 million more.” But relatively speaking, we fell to the bottom. We can all see why people were not very happy, and they would like to know that there was a rationale.”
“I am delighted to see so many colleagues in the Chamber, and to see the Minister in his place. I know he has worked tirelessly on this issue in a difficult funding environment. We all look forward to hearing what he will do to bring about an end to this inequity, which has gone on too long.”
“He is right when he says: “There is no possible way to arrive at a fairer formula without taking money away from schools already facing cuts.” He is running a members organisation, but has taken that on board. It is brave for a trade union leader with members in schools across the country to accept the logic and say, “Some schools will have to lose, but that has to happen for us to have fair funding.” If he and Brian Lightman at the Association of School and College Leaders are prepared to face their members, some of whom will lose out, and say that a different settlement is right, surely Ministers should grasp the nettle and make sure it happens. There is no way that we can defend a settlement under which there is a gap of more than £2,000 per pupil between the best-funded and least-funded 10 authorities.”
“Barnsley would see the largest funding gain if the F40 proposal were introduced, and other deprived councils, including Leeds, Doncaster, Knowsley, Gateshead, Sheffield and Sunderland, would all make triple-figure gains per pupil under that proposal. A new formula would also restore fairness for the more rural counties of England, such as the East Riding, which failed to benefit from new Labour largesse. A redistribution of resources is both right and fair. It should probably be phased in—I would say over three years—to mitigate the impact on those who will lose out. Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, supports fairer funding.”
“I am grateful to you for that timely reminder, Mr Walker, although I find that I am horribly few pages into my speech. I will have to truncate it. The clock is ticking. We want to hear from the Minister about when we will have proposals for consultation. The gap between the highest and lowest-funded local authorities has grown steadily. Let us say that one local authority is on £6,000 per pupil and another is on around £4,000; if we give 2% to each, the cash gap will widen—that is obvious, really. That cannot be allowed to continue. I am aware of how many other colleagues are ready to speak, but I will say just a little more. I have touched on how a fairer system would affect different areas.”
“I would like my hon. Friend to know that, when I started campaigning for fairer funding in local government and education, I had blond hair. I have been doing this not just for eight years—I first raised the F40 in 2005. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to be courageous when they come forward with proposals? They need to be ambitious and really lift authorities that have been disadvantaged for too long. At the end of this, we have to have the courage to do something significant and level the playing field, albeit that it will take time to bring these things in.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just the Minister whom we are challenging today? It is delightful to see the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) representing Her Majesty’s Opposition, as today is also an opportunity for the Labour party to set out that it is committed to fairer funding and accepts that there will be the need for redistribution; it will be painful, but it is right that it should happen.”
“My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way to me again. It is also important that people outside this place do not think that this issue is about stopping recognition of deprivation. The pupil premium exists precisely to meet the needs of those in deprivation, but we must ensure that there is not double-counting of deprivation and that we have a system that is fair to every child, wherever they live.”
“It is worth putting on record that with the number of pupils expected to increase by 7% in England over this Parliament, there will be a 7% increase in cash terms in the schools budget. That is in the context of a need for a big readjustment across Government spending to take us into surplus and not to give the very children we are trying to educate further debt to shoulder in years to come.”
“I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way and I congratulate her again on her post. She said she would expect new funding to come into the system. Was she ruling out redistribution? It is politically difficult. The previous Labour Government did not want to go there: although many Labour areas would benefit, perhaps more would lose. I recognise the political difficulty, but surely similar children in similar schools in similar circumstances should get similar funding. If we accept the principle and accept that it is wrong now, we have to accept redistribution. Does she accept that principle and support those of us who, like the Minister, will have to take the difficult decisions?”
“The £390 million is in its second year, and that will be the baseline. Will the Minister consider looking at the allocation again, because only a little more than half of it went to the lowest-funded authorities? If those that should not have had it have only recently received it, their pain in losing it will be less. The £390 million could be repurposed to lift up the lowest-funded authorities together. That would remove the outliers, even before we get to the national funding formula.”
“Westminster was a beneficiary, was it not? I may have got that wrong. Clearly, the money was not always going to the lowest-funded authorities. Only a little more than half went to the lowest-funded authorities. There is a real opportunity to look at this again.”
“Perhaps the Minister is about to move on to what I am going to ask him. Can he set out the principles that will be used, so that we have some idea of the parameters that will be used to determine allocation? This will be politically challenging, so it is important that the terms on which it is done carry the widest possible support across the House.”
“It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. What a delight this is! It was 10 years ago when I first asked a question about F40 funding to a Labour Minister, and I got a singularly inadequate reply. It was in March 2006 when I got my first debate on this subject. I called for an urgent debate in January 2007, and secured one in May 2007. This has been going on for a long, long time. The Minister and the Government are committed to delivering fair funding for our schools; that is long overdue and very welcome. I think colleagues would like to hear more about the principles; we will perhaps do so when the Minister comes forward early in the new year—certainly by the end of January—with proposals to be consulted on.”
“It seems that the free university education of middle-class children, who are predominantly the most likely to go to university, has been funded at the expense of working-class kids in further education colleges, who have had their vocational opportunities stunted as a result. I do not think that the SNP has much to teach us about that, although they do seem to have more equal funding of schools, per pupil. It seems a good principle to have pretty much level funding, except when the reasons not to are overwhelming, such as higher teaching costs in London. That does not mean, however, that we need have the gross discrepancies that we see today. It has been a great debate, and I thank all my colleagues for being here. I look forward to the Minister coming forward with proposals as soon as possible.”
“As it is, there has been a 7% increase in the education budget in this Parliament because of the number of pupils. Given the context, there has to be redistribution. Some people will lose, which means looking them in the eye and explaining why it is fair and right that they should do so. That takes courage, but if we are going to do it, we could do with both sides of the House joining in and accepting that principle. I welcome Labour’s support for fairer funding, but it needs to be followed by the recognition of the need for redistribution. In my final seconds, I want to comment on the contribution of the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), the Scottish National party spokeswoman.”
“We need more on the timing, because while consulting widely and seeking consensus is credible, the Government are committed to this. It does not require consensus; it requires the implementation of the manifesto promise. Seeking consensus is entirely right, but requiring it is a different matter altogether. Then there is the element of ambition. How far are the Government prepared to go? I think it was a Treasury official who said, years ago, “Minister, the people you make happy, you never make as happy as the people you make unhappy, unhappy.” That is the problem. When we finally get the proposals, we and our constituents will grunt and say, “About time,” but there has to be redistribution; it is unfortunate that the Opposition spokeswoman, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), was not prepared to say that.”
“What a lot of people outside this place will try to square is the right hon. Gentleman’s speech to the Labour party conference in which he said that he would cut these budgets by 5% to 10%. Rather than a thoughtful critique of what the Government are actually doing, what we have today is a cut out and paste standard attack on the Conservative Government for acting in a fiscally responsible way, which he suggested that they should do just a few weeks ago.”
“On the new funding formula for the police, there is concern among many that it favours the urban over the rural. Will my right hon. Friend meet me and other colleagues from across the House who represent rural constituencies to discuss the formula and ensure that we get something that is fair to all?”
“I add to my right hon. Friend’s list the police and crime commissioner for Humberside, Matthew Grove, who is working hard with the fire service to have a joint service centre for vehicles across the two services, saving millions of pounds in capital and revenue terms over the years. We have not heard much today about Labour’s U-turn in recognising that greater democratic oversight of local policing has been a significant contribution to better policing and improvements in crime figures across the country.”